


you can write our future, but you can't edit the past

by handschuhmaus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Gen, Light Angst, Sickfic, sxvxrxssnape's Snapetober 2020
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-30
Updated: 2020-10-31
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:02:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27296107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/handschuhmaus/pseuds/handschuhmaus
Summary: there were always and ever choices that seemed open and obvious to Lily but not to him.however, now he's got no reason not to be able to make his own choices.(belatedly for the Snapetober prompt 5, sick/fever)
Relationships: Lily Evans Potter & Severus Snape, Petunia Evans Dursley & Lily Evans Potter, Petunia Evans Dursley & Lily Evans Potter & Severus Snape, Petunia Evans Dursley & Severus Snape
Kudos: 4





	you can write our future, but you can't edit the past

The nonsense of their guerilla war has begun to die down, it seems, and Severus Snape no longer sees some former member of Slytherin House (and probably present member of Voldemort's groups) or another at his door most evenings. 

The fact has lulled him into a security not warranted this night, when the door bangs at--he checks the clock--12:27AM, just as he had fallen asleep in anticipation of an early morning potions session. The pureblood women still come to him for little doses of (truth be told, boring) minor potions, against earache or itchiness in their toddlers, or hangovers in their husbands, and it's a lucrative sideline that he still cannot allow to distract him from his job preparing ingredients and bases at an apothecary supply company.

But not one of them has been granted to right to come up to Cokeworth and disturb his sleep (rather, he comes to them at their convenience, with a traveling case), and anyway most of them don't know where he lives. Most of them would set off the wards. Probably a neighbor then? 

He slides his feet into slippers Narcissa Malfoy had insisted upon giving him, and contemplates for a long sleepy moment what to put on over the long nightshirt for decency's sake before settling on a longish coat bought at a secondhand store when he thought he'd be walking more, and outdoors, for the job.

The trip downstairs and to the front door is almost automatic in his rudely awakened state, and he can only blink owlishly and stammer "whaga-umph" at the person outside his door.

Lily Evans (Lily Evans _Potter_ , that is), is wearing sweatpants and a very oversized jumper over what must be a nightshirt too. He is suddenly very conscious of his own skinny calves, goosepimpling in the moonlight.

"Sev!" she greets him after a moment with forced cheerfulness. And then, in a more somber voice, his once childhood friend explains, "Harry's very sick and I'm worried, and I'm hoping you could make him a potion? I haven't slept more than an hour at a time for two days and I haven't got my cauldron with me."

"Is--Is Potter there?" he carefully enunciates, tongue still thick with sleep. It seems awfully selfish of her husband to leave her caring for his kid without spelling her. And it's not like the erstwhile friends left off on good terms before she married one of the bullies who targeted him. 

Lily laughs what seems almost like drunkenly, but perhaps it is explained by her lack of sleep. "Him? That toerag? Good riddance."

"You. You aren't with him any more," Severus blurts, even though at this point, so far as he's concerned, it's still a question.

"No," she says with emphatic relish. "The divorce came through six months ago. Oh--but I'm living with Petunia."

"With Petunia?!" That blindsides him, even more than the divorce, maybe because the latter seems both plausible and impossible. And last he heard Tuney still hated magic.

Lily turns pleading tones on him. "Please? Harry's my son, Sev. And yeah, I'm not with James anymore."

It occurs to him that the matter is probably urgent, though he, not a genuine healer by any means, is unaccustomed to these night calls. "Let me get dressed and get a cauldron and--I suppose a potions kit. What is it you think he needs?"

"Fever reducer,"—which he hasn't got on hand, indeed— "Pepper-Up,"—which he does—"and can you check him for Speckled Pixie Fever?" 

He frowns thoughtfully, unfamiliar with an ailment by that name. "I suppose I can apparate back if I need a strange ingredient," he hedges, presuming they've not got a Floo. 

Lily nods, a little frantic, and he careens around the house assembling a bag before throwing on some sort-of-respectable Muggle-ish clothes. He's hardly going to wear his hard won best where it might be subject to baby spit up, but nor would it be ideal to face Tuney in ragged old clothes.

One head-spinning Side-Along Apparition later, and they're in the coatroom of a Muggleish modern flat that smells at the moment of sweat and camphor and what was probably yesterday's Chinese takeaway.

He hadn't realized he would be so susceptible to concern, but the clearly feverish toddler with James Potter's hair is sniffling and clearly struggling to breathe, and his heart plummets into his belly before settling awkwardly in his throat—all metaphorically speaking. The tot, and a somewhat larger blond kid who is also sniffling, but asleep, are laid out on a blanket on the couch beside Petunia. It's the first time he's seen her in a rather bedraggled sweat suit combo, and the first time he's seen her so lacking in overall ...put-togetherness, her hair escaping from a stubby braid that must be an attempt at tidying it (he figures she's trying for a Sarah Jane Smith look in normal waking hours), and dark circles and vestiges of acne unconcealed on her worn looking face.

"Has he got answers?" Petunia says hoarsely, then breaks into a cough. 

"He's going to try to help Harry. I don't know if he can get Dudley or you anything--I don't know what would work," Lily admits, and walks over to the kitchen. Severus follows, figuring that's where he'll brew (like his mother before him, in the rundown house in Cokeworth), and by the time he's put the kit on the table and set down the cauldron, Lily has poured two glasses of orange juice. 

"D'you want something to drink?" she asks. He suddenly feels hungry instead--there hadn't been much he felt up to eating in his cupboards last night and so not much dinner, but that is too lengthy an imposition, too much of a distraction.

Sev draws his wand out of his sleeve in preparation, and goes over the diagnostic incantations in his head, where the few he knows have been laboriously impressed. "A glass of water, I think. But after your son." 

Petunia gets the other glass of orange juice, and sips at it while Sev waves his wand over Lilly's boy. One pudgy hand of the other toddler (who must be Tuney's) grasps Harry's forearm in his sleep, like he was trying to comfort his cousin. And from his own experience, not out of medical training, he figures the three of them on the couch all have colds.

He has to wrack his brain to work out the meaning of the particular combination of colors the diagnostic spell yields, when it does. Most of what he recalls suggests that a solution used for a family of magical ailments might prove helpful, but he double checks it in a compendium of household knowledge that bears the clear hand of Molly Weasley. 

_tbc_


End file.
